One of the most compelling essays ever turned in to me while I served as an adjunct English instructor at a local college was from a young woman describing a very brief moment in time with which I’m sure we’re all familiar.

The class’ assignment had been to take a microscope – figuratively speaking – and focus in on an everyday event, then write 800 to 1,000 words on it.

Actually, allow me to correct myself. I remember at least one student who literally took a microscope to his topic – and then proceeded to write about how incredibly different things look when observed not with the naked eye, but one that’s been mechanically enhanced.

In his case, it was a Windmill cookie, and I was reminded of all this just this morning, as I finished off a whole handful of them. And I’m not even Dutch.

In the young woman’s case, she went beyond observation, choosing to point out how frustrating this one little itty-bitty thing could be, and she did an artful job of painting a picture with words of how that second or two in your life can alter your mood, if only for a short time.

My mind sometimes deals with minutiae in ways that I stay stuck on the little things, which I suspect is a sign of either a low IQ, or old age. And I’m not saying the two are related.

Just the other day, for example, someone posted on Facebook how weird but true it was that a sandwich cut diagonally tasted better than one served up as two rectangles.

I pondered that for a minute, and then another minute, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, even though I knew it was inane.

It was just as inane as when I used to trick young swimmers I’d be teaching into the deep end by lying to them and saying that “It’s a lot warmer over here in the 12 feet.”

But they wondered what if, and down they’d slide along the gutter, hand over hand, eventually nodding to one another with a look that said, “Hey, it IS warmer down here!”

I suspect many of them were Dutch.

At this point in today’s column, I want to issue a caution.

I do so because the last time I wrote about crazy little things, people came up to me for months and said I had ruined them in certain ways. For instance, I once wrote about how every time I slice a banana for my cereal, I aim for 20 pieces. No more, no less.

Readers began to surface, lambasting me for putting a hex on their own bananas, or more appropriately, their brains. To this day, I still have people complain that they no longer carve a banana without thinking about exactly 20 slices.

I can’t recall the name of the gal who wrote the essay. But I can see her countenance. Even tell you where she used to sit, and the color of her hair.

But not her name.

Still, I remember what she wrote, and am reminded of it about half the time I plug something – anything – into an electrical outlet.

She’d used great detail to describe the sort of plugs that have only two prongs, and how the neutral prong is larger than the “hot” prong.

And how maddening it is, when you stab the plug into the outlet without really looking, only to realize that you have it the wrong way, that you are denied, and have to take an entire second out of your day to flip it.